Cooking with Children!

"Children who cook say 'I can,' not 'I can't'."
- The New York Times

Cooking is an organic experience that invokes wonder through various textures, smells, and tastes. Cooking with children has numerous benefits from laying the foundation for basic math concepts to instilling healthy eating habits. It can also be a great activity to do together while you might be spending more time at home with your kiddos than usual :)

Here's our top 10 benefits of cooking with children as well as some tips for how kids can help in the kitchen!!

1. Models healthy food choices!

Cooking with your kids gives you the opportunity to model healthy food choices for them. Additionally, preparing meals with your children helps them to build a healthy attitude toward food and to develop a sense of good nutrition that will continue on into their adulthood.

TIP: To help kids use a flame safe cooker, they can use a portable camping stove at the right height for them!

2. Encourages creativity!

Cooking naturally draws attention to color, texture, patterns, and shapes. Allowing children to make decisions, add extra features, and do as much of the work as possible can inspire creativity and inventiveness.

3. Aids in social emotional development!

Cooking is a great vehicle for communication. Children learn to share, to take turns, and to enjoy eating together. Cooking promotes social knowledge as kids learn rules for hygiene and dining, explore cultural traditions regarding the creation of certain foods, and follow safety precautions during preparation and cooking.

TIP: Have the kids wash and peel produce! Lots of things can be peeled by hand like bananas and onions. If a peeler is needed like for carrots and potatoes, have the child hold the item at the top with the bottom secured on a surface. The child should start peeling at the middle, going down. When the bottom half is done, turn it over and repeat!

4. Helps brain development!

Cooking with your kids engages all their senses. It also inspires curiosity, thinking, and problem solving, as well as offers new opportunities to make predictions and observations. While cooking, children learn to read a recipe, organize ingredients, follow a sequence, and carry out multiple directions.

5. Advances motor skills!

Cooking allows kids to practice moving and advance both their fine and gross motor skills. When kids mash bananas, stir batter, crack eggs, chop carrots, peel potatoes, crush nuts, or knead bread, they move their fingers and hands as well as their arms and body to exercise coordination.  

​TIP: Have the kids do the hard work!! Kids naturally love to smash, crack, and get messy. When cracking eggs, have the kids crack them into a separate bowl to ensure none of those pesky shells get in the rest of the mixture. Also pictured here are some kid-friendly tools for children to use in the kitchen while helping to cook! Juice a lemon with a lemon juicer, slice a strawberry with a slicer, or de-stem kale with a special stripper! Kids LOVE fun, colorful tools!!

6. Conceptualizes math skills!

Cooking with kids provides a hands-on, contextual way to introduce mathematical concepts such as those related to measurement, numbers, sequencing, fractions, and time. Additionally, while cooking and mixing ingredients, children observe different colors, textures, patterns, and shapes of the mixture, and can chart their preferences.

TIP: Cutting, chopping, and slicing can turn into an easy fraction lesson. The kids, of course, can do this part too! Just make sure to maintain their safety by using a child safe knife. In addition, measuring using measuring cups or spoons is a great use of children in the kitchen! Teach them to level their measurements off with their hand or a butter knife. 

7. Improves language skills!

Cooking with children is a natural way for kids to learn new vocabulary. In addition to reading recipes, kids can talk about the ingredients being used, the process and changes they observe, and the finished product - all together while learning new words and their meanings.

8. Develops science skills! 

Cooking integrates three major science concepts: life science, physics, and chemistry. As children cooking with either plant or animal-derived ingredients, they begin to understand the connection between their own lives and plants and animals that make they healthy. Cooking involves simple machines, tools, and human actions that allow children to make a natural connection to physics. Lastly, by experimenting with ingredients of different properties (states of matter, temperature, viscosity, etc.), kids begin to understand basic chemistry concepts.

TIP: All these tools are relatively simple for kids to use! Have them crank the grinder, use the handheld blender (perhaps with a little help steadying the bowl), or spin the salad!

9. Grows self esteem!

Cooking helps to develop children's sense of pride, confidence, and satisfaction as they work on their cooking skills as well as further develop the various skills mentioned here in this blog. In addition, cooking encourages self-direction and independence for kids. Something we often hear here at ACG is "I made it myself!"

TIP: Have the kids plate and decorate how they want, just to take one more thing off your 'plate' ;)

10. It is super fun!

See you next time :)